Upgrade neccesary for weddings?

[Kelsey Emuss]

I actually shot some footage on my own memory card to test at home and see what I need to "tweak" for a smooth work-flow. I use Premiere Pro so an upgrade to 6 was neccessary (just got the trial for this purpose). Aside from a SLIGHTLY longer rendering time I didn't encounter any glitches.

One interesting thing about this camera...you basically "star" some footage as you are shooting (bride prep, key ceremony moments, some photo shoot clips) then while you are eating your steak tartare you press a button and the camera creates a "Highlight Clip" complete with transitions and music. You press another button and the camera projects the Highlight video on the wall.

Same day edit while you are eating dessert! Clearly "in theory" it sounds interesting but could be a piece of junk to watch?? Still an amazing little feature!

[Noa Put]

Aside from a SLIGHTLY longer rendering time I didn't encounter any glitches.

The main problem is to read the avchd files as that is still mainly up to the processor to handle this, your processor is the absolute minimum to handle avchd, I used to have a q6600 processor and that was just barely able to play 1 stream of avchd video in realtime in edius 6, your set up is a bit faster so you probably are ok as long as you do one stream only.
I have a I7 950 and currently I"m editing a multicam shoot (3 camera's) of native avchd 2.0 1080p 50p footage in realtime in edius 6.5, adding a 4th stream is too much for my system but since I never use more then 3 camera's my set up can cope just fine.

[Dave Partington]

Originally Posted by Kelsey Emuss

I use Premiere Pro so an upgrade to 6 was neccessary (just got the trial for this purpose). Aside from a SLIGHTLY longer rendering time I didn't encounter any glitches.!

That's good news except.... CS6 introduced a new AVCHD bug which only effects SOME cameras. I know that some Canon and some Sony cameras are effected, but of course I don't know it yours is one of them.

Everything runs perfectly for shorter clips, but if you come back with a longer clip (e.g. a ceremony or speeches) then Premiere Pro basically disappears up it's own backside trying to play the file.

Adobe don't seem motivated to fix this problem. I reported it back in May 2012 and sent sample footage which they acknowledged showed the problem exactly. Since then, no updates to fix it. Lots of other people have the problem to.

So, before you get too much further down the line, see if you can get a full 30-50 minute clip and see how it plays from (say) 30 mins in until the end. If all is well then you are good to go. If not, you may have to find a workaround (which generally means either re-wrapping it or transcoding it).

[Noa Put]

I reported it back in May 2012 and sent sample footage which they acknowledged showed the problem exactly. Since then, no updates to fix it. Lots of other people have the problem to.

That I can't understand, they are probably busy making and spending too much time and money on advertisments trying to get as much new clients in as possible. For a piece of software costing that much acknowledged and repeatable bugs should be dealt with an update asap, not one year later. Probably it will be dealt with in a new paying update.

[Kelsey Emuss]

Originally Posted by Dave Partington

That's good news except.... CS6 introduced a new AVCHD bug which only effects SOME cameras. I know that some Canon and some Sony cameras are effected, but of course I don't know it yours is one of them.

Everything runs perfectly for shorter clips, but if you come back with a longer clip (e.g. a ceremony or speeches) then Premiere Pro basically disappears up it's own backside trying to play the file.

Adobe don't seem motivated to fix this problem. I reported it back in May 2012 and sent sample footage which they acknowledged showed the problem exactly. Since then, no updates to fix it. Lots of other people have the problem to.

So, before you get too much further down the line, see if you can get a full 30-50 minute clip and see how it plays from (say) 30 mins in until the end. If all is well then you are good to go. If not, you may have to find a workaround (which generally means either re-wrapping it or transcoding it).

CRAP! Is there a list of what cameras are effected??

[Dave Partington]

Originally Posted by Kelsey Emuss

CRAP! Is there a list of what cameras are effected??

Sorry, it's not in Adobe's interest to promote lists like that so we only have scattered lists from people complaining on Adobe's own forums. I am just one amongst many.

@Kelsey: The problem only exhibits itself with spanned clips. AVCHD clips are limited in size due to the cards using FAT32, so once they reach the max size they start a new file, and when that one get's too big another one and so on. The metadata the goes along with the AVCHD video files tells the NLE which clips to play as one long clip and while ones are individual. It seems that Panasonic files don't have the problem but some (possibly all) Canon files do and some (not sure if it's all) Sony files do. The only real way to find out if yours is one that's effected is to try it, or find some one else who has one who can try it.

@Noa: Adobe claim it's caused by a 3rd party supplied codec, but if it were me I'd be on the phone every single day asking where the fix was and, oh, that payment you wanted? Sorry, we're withholding payment until you fix the bug!

All the complaints on the Adobe forums died down after about 6 months, not because we got a fix, but because nothing happened and we got no updates. There's only so many times you can post a complaint over and over.

It effectively stopped me using my Canon HF G10 for long shoots if I knew I was going to edit in Premiere Pro because the footage was basically unusable.

You can't blame the camera though, every other piece of software I have, such as FCPX and Premiere Pro CS5.5 (!!!!!) plays it fine. The bug was introduced in CS6.0.

If Adobe tell us it's "fixed" in the "next version" but we have to pay for the upgrade there are going to be a LOT of unhappy people.

[Rob Cantwell]

I had a Sony HXR-MC2000E as a B cam but it wasn't really that good so after looking around i've identified this a PJ760 (a CX
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/858085-EG/Sony_HDR_PJ760E_96_GB_HDR_PJ760E_Flash.html almost the same as a NX30 except for the audio but a lot cheaper.
It might be a good small cam for the OP to consider.
and yeah a new computer is probably required!

[Chris Harding]

If the budget is really tough you can also edit AVCHD footage on a DuoCore if you are prepared to transcode it down to HDV MPEG2 ...you won't see any difference in the footage (not visually anyway). I used my DuoCore exclusively when I first went the HD route ...AVCHD files simply stalled Sony Vegas on my DuoCore so I used to transcode using Upshift and the resulting HDV files ran sweetly... admittedly your render times will still be slow (typically around 8X realtime so a 20 minute clip could take nearly 3 hours to render down to MPEG2 SD but at least it works ...weddings just took longer to edit.

Once I upgraded to an i7 machine things were a lot easier..no transcoding and clips render in about 1/3rd real time so my 20 minute ceremont that took 3 hours was done in around 6 or 7 minutes.

However it can be done on a DuoCore until you do some more weddings and make some extra cash to upgrade the computer

Chris

[Peter Rush]

Originally Posted by Dave Partington

So, before you get too much further down the line, see if you can get a full 30-50 minute clip and see how it plays from (say) 30 mins in until the end. If all is well then you are good to go. If not, you may have to find a workaround (which generally means either re-wrapping it or transcoding it).

Dave do you know of a Windows app that will re-wrap AVCHD files without transcoding? There are a few I've found for Mac but none for Windows :/

Pete

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Peter Rush

Dave do you know of a Windows app that will re-wrap AVCHD files without transcoding? There are a few I've found for Mac but none for Windows :/

Pete

I'm not Dave but I think that what you are looking for is WinRewrap FATPIGtures Software

[Dave Blackhurst]

@Dave P -

Are you talking about a glitch at the stitch point? Typically caused by trying to drag clips into the NLE rather than importing them using the manufacturers software to import? There is also a little standalone program to perform a proper stitch that was flaoting around here on DVi.

You can't just drag clips from the camera for some reason (ran into it early on with a Sony, using their software to import solves the problem). It makes sense that you SHOULD be able to, but something about the AVCHD format keeps it from working that way - I know the Sony required the last clip to complete the earlier clips and stitch them properly, otherwise the earlier clips wouldn't play properly...

In short, I don't think its an NLE issue (Vegas wouldn't handle clips right out of the cam either), but rather an AVCHD workflow/import issue.

[Dave Partington]

Originally Posted by Dave Blackhurst

@Dave P -

Are you talking about a glitch at the stitch point? Typically caused by trying to drag clips into the NLE rather than importing them using the manufacturers software to import? There is also a little standalone program to perform a proper stitch that was flaoting around here on DVi.

NO. Premiere Pro has a bug there once you get in to the second clip, it keeps opening the first clip and appears to have to read through that entire clip again. Once you get to the third clip it opens both first and second clip and has to re-read those. And so on.

I've never dragged the clips in directly and always imported them the official Adobe way via the media browser.

[Dave Blackhurst]

OK, "importing" via the NLE rather than using the manufacturer software to recombine the clips into one on import might be where the problem is, yours sounds similar to the issues I had with Vegas.

Not sure what it is, but those 2G AVCHD sections of longer clips really need to be "stitched" before bringing them into the edit, all sorts of odd problems if you leave them in pieces.

I've had NO problems once I imported with Sonys software, which does the stitching so you have a single clip rather than 2G "chunks". What I was able to determine was that the "sub clips" created when AVCHD exceeds that 2G file limit have "reference" information to allow import software to correctly reconstruct the original single long clip/file (since the computer doesn't have file size limitations), but the way the subfiles are tagged makes them so they don't "read" as a proper file, so you may or may not get predictable playback of the subclips if they have not been "reconstructed".

[Dave Partington]

That sounds like your software is re-wapping it then?

Even some re-wrapped clips still exhibited the problem. For instance, using ClipWrap to re-wrap the files in to a single file didn't fix it. Nor did using the re-wrapped file that FCPX created. These work flawlessly in in other apps for but some reason Premiere Pro still had problems.

My understanding was there was a Windows utility that produced re-wraped files that worked perfectly, but I can't recall it's name. ClipWrap may have been updated by now too - you'd have to check.

What I found was that "sometimes" you could ingest using Prelude and transcode to ProRes (or other chose format) and "most" of the time things went fine, but "some" of the time it would go belly up just like Premiere Pro. It became so much of a lottery that in the end I gave us using AVCHD in Premiere Pro and either transcoded it to ProRes (using FCPX), edited it in FCPX, or just didn't use that camera.on the shoot.

[Dave Blackhurst]

I've heard it called "stitching" - it's really just the importing software re-connecting the subclips into a single clip - the problem arises if you are trying to bring in the SUB clips, you'll have problems at the 2G "break" points - and/or with the clips individually.

For Sony at least, just use their (badly named, Windows only) "Play Memories Home" to import, you'll have perfectly "stitched" full length files, no matter how many 2G "subclips" you started with on the camera media.